I rememember when I first visited Korea many moons ago, Korean Air had perhaps the world's worst safety record. It's planes were crashing all over the place. It was right up there with Air China for crashes. Other airlines even stopped their route sharing arrangement wirh Korean Air because their passengers safety could not be guaranteed. Admittedly, its safety record has improved significantly over the past decade. But a recent study of all airlines safety record since 1983 still places its safety record at #5. That is, only four other airlines have worse overall safety records.

The ratings take into account the number and deadliness of the hull losses (destroyed airplanes) they have suffered in the past 30 years, how they have fared more recently, and how many flights they have flown without incident.

The results do not take into account the cause of the hull losses, or whether the airline is at fault, so they are not a perfect measure of how safely an airline behaves.

Talk about a headline for sensationalism.

*Planes shot down (1983 KAL flight from New York to Seoul being the biggest).
Note: The last fatal passenger incident was the Korean Air Flight 801 crash in 1997.

wrote:

Korean Air had many fatal accidents between 1970 and 1999, during which time it wrote off 16 aircraft in serious incidents and accidents with the loss of 700 lives. Since then, safety has greatly improved, and the airline ranks among the best in the 21st century

*Planes bombed back in the '80s (2 of only 3 Air India flights with hull loses (#3 in the list) in the last 30 years ...

"The flight operations department appears to have poor communications between management and the staff. There is very little feedback to the crew on any matters, important or otherwise. The Foreign Captains especially, source most of the company information via the rumor network. This is a most unsatisfactory and of little benefit to anybody. It appears that the silent, secret dis-information technique is a current management style."

"Many complaints are received from the passengers that the aircraft cabins operated to HOT. Should be 24C to 25C and are often set at 28C plus."

Last edited by diver on Sat Jan 26, 2013 9:06 pm; edited 1 time in total

"The flight operations department appears to have poor communications between management and the staff. There is very little feedback to the crew on any matters, important or otherwise. The Foreign Captains especially, source most of the company information via the rumor network. This is a most unsatisfactory and of little benefit to anybody. It appears that the silent, secret dis-information technique is a current management style."

"Many complaints are received from the passengers that the aircraft cabins operated to HOT. Should be 24C to 25C and are often set at 28C plus."

An even better excerpt from beginning of that article is this one:

wrote:

The following internal safety audit report into Korean Airlines flying operations was conducted in September 1998

which occurred right after the crash of Flight 801 in Guam in 1997 and resulted in major changes in flight operations and other procedures and it is of note that flight 801 in 1997 was the LAST flight that resulted in a passenger fatality.

Air India was rated 3rd worst but their last incident was in May of 1990 and there was NO loss of life in that hull loss. Last crash with loss of life occurred in June of 1985 and was caused by a terrorist bomb.

Also notable is the exclusion of companies like:

Pan-Am (now part of DELTA) - flight 103 anyone? how about Tenerife.

American Airlines: 5 downed planes including 2 hijacked flights on Sept 11.
587 passengers and ~2500 on the ground killed.
Not picking on ANY AIRLINE since the majority incidents were NOT the fault of the airline but to make the point that the original article from Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre (JACDEC) is misleading in the extreme.

I heard that Korean Air insists it's pilots speak only English in the cockpit at all stages of the flight these days.

It's to try and get over the silly "older is wiser" mentality Koreans have. For example, the younger co-pilot disagrees with something the older captain does or says... they think speaking English only will allow the younger chap to air his opinion and potentially avert a disaster

The following internal safety audit report into Korean Airlines flying operations was conducted in September 1998

.

You caught me. I clearly intended to pass off the report as current by stating in the very first sentence of my post that it was from "a few years back".

Further, I think it was quite clear that I was making fun of communication strategies in Korean companies (I thought a lot of teachers here could relate to that) and climate control on the aircraft (which ANYONE who has ridden public transit in Korea could relate to).

I heard that Korean Air insists it's pilots speak only English in the cockpit at all stages of the flight these days.

It's to try and get over the silly "older is wiser" mentality Koreans have. For example, the younger co-pilot disagrees with something the older captain does or says... they think speaking English only will allow the younger chap to air his opinion and potentially avert a disaster

A lot of the situations of why crashes happened were because of this, and there all explained in that Gladwell book mentioned before.

...They even went so far as to assume English names while they were flying -- the notion was that if they had some sort of new identity then they would also be more inclined to speak up over a superior.

The following internal safety audit report into Korean Airlines flying operations was conducted in September 1998

.

You caught me. I clearly intended to pass off the report as current by stating in the very first sentence of my post that it was from "a few years back".

Further, I think it was quite clear that I was making fun of communication strategies in Korean companies (I thought a lot of teachers here could relate to that) and climate control on the aircraft (which ANYONE who has ridden public transit in Korea could relate to).

Have a drink. Smoke a cigar. Relax.

Well, I for one regularly interpret "a few" to mean 15. I'm sure it wasn't intentional (probably remembered hearing about it a while ago and not sure how long and didn't notice the year in the article, I assume), but it did make it sound like it was a current thing/happening recently, when it clearly isn't. I think it looked more misleading because it came in the context of a thread about a sensationalized/misleading article saying that Korean air is not very safe currently.

"Many complaints are received from the passengers that the aircraft cabins operated to HOT. Should be 24C to 25C and are often set at 28C plus."

Whatever else is proven, this is unquestionably true. The various airlines in Korea are great, but the planes are way too hot. Similarly, Incheon is a fantastic airport but is also consistently too hot. Still, price and schedule being equal, I would choose the Korean carrier over a North American one every time (the same with spending time in Incheon vs most other airports I`ve been in).